Morning Reading List, 07.21.08

Good morning Washington.
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We’ve got your morning mix of media Muesli after the jump…

That was AboveTheLaw’s David Lat saying goodbye to D.C. over the weekend with a farewell brunch. 39 years ago, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and “Buzz” Aldrin blasted off from the moon. It’s the birthday of Ernest Hemingway, Janet Reno, John Negroponte and Garry Trudeau. It was one year ago Friday when Mediabistro was sold. What journalist is “ready to rock this week” (despite not lasting during that whole “no drinking for a week” thing…). “Meet the Press” announced that it will interview Sen. Barack Obama this weekend, from London. That was Hillary Clinton senior advisor Philippe Reines talking about Clinton’s new hairdo with Tammy Haddad on XM Radio Friday. “I have to admit, I didn’t notice it and there was a little bit of an awkward moment with the boss about it.” That was Roll Call’s Erin Billings telling CN8’s Robert Tranham, ‘You always tell me that I don’t smile enough!’ on Roll Call TV. John McCaslin interviews Rachel Sklar (and has a nice thing or two to say about us, too. Thanks John!) Can you pass the News Quiz? Jesyke Twitters: “jesyke is trying to figure out how her dad was friends with Chris Matthews at UNC. I think he’s making it up” bmorrissey Twitters: “CNN is helping a guy try to find his missing dog. It is a v slow time for news.” Today’s “Angry Journalist” rant of the day: “I’m angry that Twitter is being used among people in my newsroom to be self-congratulatory and to suck up to my editor. A little clique has formed among this group of people, and it’s disgusting that they feel the need to use a public forum on the Internet instead of just walking into his office.” Check out today’s White House Photo of the Day from Time. The price of oil is affecting your life in only a minor way.

The AP announced, “Jesse Washington, entertainment editor for The Associated Press and a former magazine editor, has been named race and ethnicity writer for the news cooperative. The appointment was announced Friday by Mike Oreskes, the AP’s managing editor for U.S. news. Washington replaces Erin Texeira, who resigned in March.”

Matthew Sheffield will be writing an opinion column for The Washington Times on the intersection of politics and technology (yes, related to Carrie Sheffield).

The Washington Continent reports, “United Press International today corrected an omission of important information from its ‘crash’ story about Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon’s ownership of the Washington, D.C.-based news wire. UPI immediately corrected its omission after being notified of it by The Washington Continent.”

A release announced, “Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by California Judge Cormac Carney’s decision ordering William Gertz, a national security reporter for the Washington Times, to appear in court for open-ended questioning on his reporting techniques. The order comes regarding Gertz’s article discussing supposed espionage attempts by China in the United States.”

A tipster wrote to us back on July 9: “was this a slam in the politico today? Bigelow forwards some job announcements to George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management mailing list. ‘Most of the jobs that I post are never advertised in Roll Call,’ she said, ‘so you need to have somebody inside who’s an L.D. or a press secretary who’s willing to post them every time they come up, or you’ll never hear of them.’ Well, it’s either a slam (jobs aren’t posted in Roll Call) or a compliment (that Roll Call is mentioned in a ‘this-is-a-must-read’ sort of way by Bigelow).”

Washington Post’s Deborah Howell writes, “The Post needs to tell us more than we know about John McCain and Barack Obama: what they stand for, what voters are thinking about them and what each is likely to do if elected.”

New York Times’ Clark Hoyt writes, “The failure of IndyMac and the precipitous decline of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a direct result of the collapse of the housing boom, but The Times handled the stories quite differently. It was aggressive on Fannie and Freddie, so aggressive that one front-page article two days before the Treasury announcement likely caused a steep drop in their already-battered stocks. The newspaper was restrained on IndyMac, at least in part out of concern that super-heated coverage could contribute to panic about more banks. I think it was too restrained.”

CJR reports, “Gannett had one helluva bad quarter, losing a tenth of its revenues from a year ago and more than a third of its profits. But something too often lost in all the gloom of the cataclysmic upheavals in the newspaper business is that they’re still profitableâ€”highly profitable in most cases. And they’re throwing away big money every quarter in the form of rich dividends.”

A CBS release announced, “Chief foreign affairs correspondent, Lara Logan, conducts the first interview with Senator Barack Obama while he’s abroad. … Logan will also file reports from this first interview with Obama on his trip for THE EARLY SHOW, Monday, July 21 and that evening, on the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC at 6:30 p.m. EDT. Katie Couric anchors the CBS EVENING NEWS from the Middle East early in the week, and will also speak to Senator Obama while he is on the ground in the region. Couric’s one-on-one interview will follow on Tuesday, July 22, on the CBS EVENING NEWS, in an area of the region not yet disclosed.”

TVNewser reports, “NBC has sold its south Florida station, WTVJ to Post-Newsweek Stations, a subsidiary of the Washington Post Company. NBC bought WTVJ in 1987 for a reported $270 million.”

A CNN release announced, “the launch of the iReport Film Festival, CNN’s first user-generated short film competition, providing a platform for voters to document this year’s presidential campaign from their personal vantage point, whether they are volunteering for a campaign or have compelling stories about this election they want to document creatively. Winning submissions, judged by both CNN.com users and a panel of judges from the film and television industry, will be announced during Anderson Cooper 360Â° on Thursday, November 13.”

PBS.org has launchedPBS Vote 2008, “a site that draws news stories, video, online tools and user comments from public television and public radio sites across the nation.”

New York Times reports, “There is no better way to get a blogger talking than by telling him what he cannot publish — although you might forgive a government prosecutor for thinking otherwise. A grand jury subpoena sent by prosecutors in the Bronx earlier this year sought information to help identify people blogging anonymously on a Web site about New York politics called Room 8.”

A release announced, “WAMU 88.5 will conduct necessary maintenance work on its broadcast tower during the week of July 21. The work will be done between 10 a.m., and 3 p.m. During the maintenance work, the station will broadcast at a lower power from an auxiliary antenna. There will be no HD Radio signal during the hours of reduced power. This will affect owners of HD Radios, who will not be able to hear WAMU’s Bluegrass Country, at 88.5-2, or WAMU-3, at 88.5-3, during the hours of reduced power. Listeners will be able to hear both channels online at bluegrasscountry.org and at wamu.org.”

A release announced, “Leaders of the Society of Professional Journalists urge editorial writers across the country to support S. 2035, the Senate version of the Free Flow of Information Act, also known as the federal media shield law.”

A release announced, “Kathleen Kilpatrick and Sheila Lalwani received $5,000 one-year stipends for graduate-level study of journalism Monday at the National Press Club’s annual awards banquet.”

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